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REEVES: THE CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR PAPERS
perhaps, the two of them would write the de¬ finitive biography.^*
Alan had lived and traveled in Europe for the first thirteen years after the President's death. Tall, handsome, and athletic, he had been accepted into the Prince of Wales' social set, becoming, in his son's words, "the perfect pattern of an Edwardian gentleman and of a Europeanized American."^^ It seems likely that the story he told the Library of Congress in 1915 was accurate: the Arthur papers he inherited were stored in the McElroy home at Albany, until he settled in Colorado Springs at the turn of the century and sent for them.^^ But either Alan Arthur deliberately misled the Library about the documents in his possession or he simply had not gone through them and was unaware of what he had. The former seems virtually certain. Alan did not inform the Library of President Arthur's order to destroy documents; he and Arthur Masten had been eager to suppress political and personal information in Mrs. Mitchell's collection; and on December 5, 1931, Alan told a young his¬ torian that the reason so few papers survived was that his father wrote very little. Arthur Masten gave the historian the same story.''^
The President's son left no will, and his estate was divided between his second wife, Rowena Dashwood Arthur, and his only de¬ scendant, thirty-six-year-old Chester A. Arthur HI (Gavin, as he preferred to be known). All financial assets were to be shared equally and objects of a purely historical nature were to be given to Gavin, who had been planning for more than a decade to write an Arthur family history.'*
WHEN GAVIN arrived in Colorado ^^ Springs, he was startled to discover, deposited in a local bank under his father's name, several boxes containing numerous photographs, pieces of jewelry, and approxi¬ mately 2,100 documents. Among the papers were receipts, bills, checkbooks, cancelled checks, scores of presidential mementoes, an Arthur family Bible, and many letters to and from the former President and his wife. There was also correspondence from James G. Blaine, John Sherman, Roscoe Conkling, Katherine Chase Sprague, U. S. Grant, James A. Garfield, Edwin D. Morgan, Stephen W. Dorsey, Thur¬ low Weed, Benjamin Brewster, Frederick Fre- linghuysen, George Bancroft, Millard Fillmore, William T. Sherman, Julia Sand, and William Arthur, Jr. Alan Arthur had told no one about these remnants of his father's past.'^
In addition, Gavin inherited eighty bound volumes of nationwide newspaper clippings compiled during the Arthur Presidency. Among the best sources of knowledge about national politics from 1881 through early 1885, these clippings were arranged chrono¬ logically and bore such volume titles as "Ap¬ pointments," "Mormonism," "Tariff Discus¬ sions," and "Presidential Predictions." The volumes had been displayed in Alan Arthur's library for almost four decades, but scholars were not informed of their existence.^"
Gavin quickly had copies typed of a num¬ ber of the most important documents, and ex¬ pressed privately a willingness to permit them to be studied.^' All but one of the bound vol-
" "But he never mentioned that again. And I cer¬ tainly do not think it would have been a frank bio¬ graphy." Chester A. Arthur III to the author, Janu¬ ary 17, 1970.
^^ Colorado Springs Sunday Gazette And Telegraph. August 8, 1937.
" His diary entry for March 23, 1901 shows him at work on a scrapbook of his father's obituary no¬ tices. The diary is one of many in the Chester A. Arthur II Papers.
" Vernon Hampton's notes, taken during the inter¬ views, are in his possession. At his sister's death in 1917 Alan inherited "a few 'family' things," but this surely did not comprise the bulk of the Arthur ma¬ terials later in his possession. "C. P." [Charles Pinkerton] to Alan, n. d. [1917], Chester A. Arthur II Papers.
" Interview with Chester A. Arthur HI, July 26,
1969. See Rowena Dashwood [Arthur] to Chester A. Arthur HI, February 12, 1938, in the Chester A. Arthur III papers. In about 1933 Gavin had secured the diaries of one of Chester Arthur's sisters, Malvina Arthur Haynesworth, to assist the preparation of his book. See Thomas C. Reeves, "The Diaries of Mal¬ vina Arthur: Windows into the Past of Our 21st President," in Vermont History, XXXVIII: 177-188 (1970).
^° A complete list of the items Chester A. Arthur III inherited is in his papers. See also the undated "List of Letters Belonging to Chester A. Arthur HI to and Concerning President Chester A. Arthur and His Administration," in ibid.
^ Interview with Chester A. Arthur 111, March 16,
1970. Photographs exist showing the volumes in the Arthur library during the Progressive Era.
^ See Chester A. Arthur III to Jeannette Nichols, March 21, 1938; Arthur to Vernon Hampton, Febru¬ ary 23, 1938, both in the Chester A. Arthur III Papers.
313

This issue includes articles on the Republican national convention of 1880, Benjamin Green Armstrong’s time among the Ojibwe, and Lawrence Dennis’s Cold War writings and critiques of American foreign policy.

REEVES: THE CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR PAPERS
perhaps, the two of them would write the de¬ finitive biography.^*
Alan had lived and traveled in Europe for the first thirteen years after the President's death. Tall, handsome, and athletic, he had been accepted into the Prince of Wales' social set, becoming, in his son's words, "the perfect pattern of an Edwardian gentleman and of a Europeanized American."^^ It seems likely that the story he told the Library of Congress in 1915 was accurate: the Arthur papers he inherited were stored in the McElroy home at Albany, until he settled in Colorado Springs at the turn of the century and sent for them.^^ But either Alan Arthur deliberately misled the Library about the documents in his possession or he simply had not gone through them and was unaware of what he had. The former seems virtually certain. Alan did not inform the Library of President Arthur's order to destroy documents; he and Arthur Masten had been eager to suppress political and personal information in Mrs. Mitchell's collection; and on December 5, 1931, Alan told a young his¬ torian that the reason so few papers survived was that his father wrote very little. Arthur Masten gave the historian the same story.''^
The President's son left no will, and his estate was divided between his second wife, Rowena Dashwood Arthur, and his only de¬ scendant, thirty-six-year-old Chester A. Arthur HI (Gavin, as he preferred to be known). All financial assets were to be shared equally and objects of a purely historical nature were to be given to Gavin, who had been planning for more than a decade to write an Arthur family history.'*
WHEN GAVIN arrived in Colorado ^^ Springs, he was startled to discover, deposited in a local bank under his father's name, several boxes containing numerous photographs, pieces of jewelry, and approxi¬ mately 2,100 documents. Among the papers were receipts, bills, checkbooks, cancelled checks, scores of presidential mementoes, an Arthur family Bible, and many letters to and from the former President and his wife. There was also correspondence from James G. Blaine, John Sherman, Roscoe Conkling, Katherine Chase Sprague, U. S. Grant, James A. Garfield, Edwin D. Morgan, Stephen W. Dorsey, Thur¬ low Weed, Benjamin Brewster, Frederick Fre- linghuysen, George Bancroft, Millard Fillmore, William T. Sherman, Julia Sand, and William Arthur, Jr. Alan Arthur had told no one about these remnants of his father's past.'^
In addition, Gavin inherited eighty bound volumes of nationwide newspaper clippings compiled during the Arthur Presidency. Among the best sources of knowledge about national politics from 1881 through early 1885, these clippings were arranged chrono¬ logically and bore such volume titles as "Ap¬ pointments" "Mormonism" "Tariff Discus¬ sions" and "Presidential Predictions." The volumes had been displayed in Alan Arthur's library for almost four decades, but scholars were not informed of their existence.^"
Gavin quickly had copies typed of a num¬ ber of the most important documents, and ex¬ pressed privately a willingness to permit them to be studied.^' All but one of the bound vol-
" "But he never mentioned that again. And I cer¬ tainly do not think it would have been a frank bio¬ graphy." Chester A. Arthur III to the author, Janu¬ ary 17, 1970.
^^ Colorado Springs Sunday Gazette And Telegraph. August 8, 1937.
" His diary entry for March 23, 1901 shows him at work on a scrapbook of his father's obituary no¬ tices. The diary is one of many in the Chester A. Arthur II Papers.
" Vernon Hampton's notes, taken during the inter¬ views, are in his possession. At his sister's death in 1917 Alan inherited "a few 'family' things" but this surely did not comprise the bulk of the Arthur ma¬ terials later in his possession. "C. P." [Charles Pinkerton] to Alan, n. d. [1917], Chester A. Arthur II Papers.
" Interview with Chester A. Arthur HI, July 26,
1969. See Rowena Dashwood [Arthur] to Chester A. Arthur HI, February 12, 1938, in the Chester A. Arthur III papers. In about 1933 Gavin had secured the diaries of one of Chester Arthur's sisters, Malvina Arthur Haynesworth, to assist the preparation of his book. See Thomas C. Reeves, "The Diaries of Mal¬ vina Arthur: Windows into the Past of Our 21st President" in Vermont History, XXXVIII: 177-188 (1970).
^° A complete list of the items Chester A. Arthur III inherited is in his papers. See also the undated "List of Letters Belonging to Chester A. Arthur HI to and Concerning President Chester A. Arthur and His Administration" in ibid.
^ Interview with Chester A. Arthur 111, March 16,
1970. Photographs exist showing the volumes in the Arthur library during the Progressive Era.
^ See Chester A. Arthur III to Jeannette Nichols, March 21, 1938; Arthur to Vernon Hampton, Febru¬ ary 23, 1938, both in the Chester A. Arthur III Papers.
313